He chuckled to himself.
"I fear," said he, "that you are of too refined a nature for this hard world. I predict that before you come to the age of thirty you will be aweary of its cruelty—always understanding when I say world that I mean the men in the world. I have to thank you for not suggesting that that was the way in which I used the word. It wearies me to have the obvious always iterated in my ears. So you feel no hankerings to see me dead?"
I made no reply, and he chuckled again and then looked upon our trove.
We made certain we had found it all—the first bag of small nuggets of which I told you, the bag of turquoises, two more bags of larger nuggets, and three separate rolls of dollar and five-dollar bills. The bills amounted to a hundred and fifty dollars—a mere drop in the bucket, as Apache said. It was the two bags of larger nuggets and the bag of turquoises that were the real "trove," but Apache Kid would not hazard a guess of their value. All that he would say then, as he weighed them in his palm, was: "You are safe, Francis—you need no more run with the pack." I did not at the moment understand his use of the word "pack," but his next words explained it.
"The only way," said he slowly, rolling a cigarette with the last thin dust of tobacco that remained in his pouch, so that he had to shake it over his hand carefully, "the only way that I can see to prevent that world-weariness coming over you is for you to acquire a sufficiency to live upon, a sufficiency that shall make it unnecessary for you to accept the laws of the pack and rend and tear and practise cunning. I think, considering such a temperament as yours, I should call off with our old bargain and strike a new one with you—half shares."
I heaved a deep sigh. I saw myself returning home—and that right speedily—I saw already the blue sea break in white foam on the ultimate rocks of Ireland, the landing at Liverpool, the train journey north, the clean streets of my own town through which I hastened—home.
"Ah, these castles," said Apache Kid, after a pause which I suppose was very brief, for such thoughts move quickly in the mind. "They can all be built now."
Then he leant forward; and he was truly serious as he looked on me.
"But one thing you will do in return," he said, and it was as the sign of an agony that I saw on his face. "You will do that little bit of business for me that I asked you once before?"
He paused, hearkening; and I too was on the alert. The squelching of a horse's hoofs was audible without.